CONCORD, North Carolina -- The season was already shot. So while the elite NASCAR drivers were fighting for a championship, Jamie McMurray and the No. 1 Earnhardt Ganassi Racing team were simply in experimental mode.

Jamie McMurray at Earnhardt Ganassi Media Tour event, in front of his new No. 1 Chevy SS and the Ganassi Racing Cessna Citation X used to reveal new sponsorship (The Huntsville Times/Mark McCarter)

The 2012 NASCAR season brought wholesale changes within the team's operation and that impacted how decisions were made.

"When you bring in so many new people, everyone has good ideas," McMurray said. "It takes a while to go through those ideas. A lot of ideas don't have to work. You have to weed through those.

"The last 10 races," McMurray continued, "were not good for the result. But we spend those 10 races doing everybody's ideas, seeing what were going to be needle-movers and what weren't."

While the storyline of preseason 2012 was upheaval at Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, for preseason 2013 it's stability.

As co-owner Felix Sabates said Wednesday morning at the NASCAR Sprint Media Tour stop, "I've been in this business a long time and they're all good years if everybody comes back ... which is a miracle in this business today."

"I would say last year the changes were a wholesale paint job," Ganassi said. "This year, the changes are more like the work of an artist as opposed to a painter. (They're) fine-tuning type of adjustments ... much smaller, more refined."

It's been two winless seasons for Earnhardt Ganassi, which held a splashy media tour event at an airplane hanger, in which an enormous curtain was suddenly dropped to reveal a Cessna Citation X jet, signifying the team's new partnership with the aircraft company.

Juan Pablo Montoya has but one Sprint Cup win, at Watkins Glen in August 2010.

McMurray has three wins, including the 2010 Daytona 500 that gave Ganassi a victory in NASCAR's signature event to go along with four Indianapolis 500 victories.

However, McMurray hasn't won since the fall of 2010, a 77-race winless streak.

Ganassi had his struggles a half-dozen years ago in IndyCar "and that made us better," he said.

"The most important thing is to have the courage to stay on path," he said. "This business ... is very, very humbling at all levels."

Sometimes last season, trying to get things turned around, "we were taking too big a swing and trying to make everything better with one change instead of doing what you normally do and fine-tuning what you have," McMurray said.

"For us, the strong suit (this season) is we haven't had any changes. It's the same group of people working together. We spent last year getting everyone's idea out on what they wanted to try. Now everyone is on the same page and pulling the rope in the same direction."